An anti-suffragette, misogynistic postcard from the collection of the Glasgow Women’s Library
Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Long before social media demanded you compress your misogyny into 140 characters, there were postcards (carrying gruesome images of a woman’s tongue being sliced in two, or mean ditties about opinionated wives) should a gentleman wish to publicly advertise his disdain for the opposite sex.

Examples of this curious anti-suffragette stationery, with its Edwardian postmarks, nestle in the temperature-controlled storeroom of the Glasgow Women’s Library alongside thousands of other items of feminist significance: whole archives from long-defunct campaign groups, stacks of the seminal Spare Rib magazine, as well as rarely collected domestic artefacts – cookery books, knitting patterns, and journals – that document the lives of individual women across the past century.

Cookery books at the Glasgow Women’s Library. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

When Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, officially opened the renovated premises in the former Bridgeton Public Library in Glasgow’s East End last November, she described the facility, which celebrates its quarter-century this month, as a “national treasure”. Now recognised as a collection of national significance and the only accredited museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK, the GWL’s current bevvy of supporters reads like a roll call of Scotland’s most gallus women: comedian Susan Calman recently launched her memoir there, interviewed by broadcaster Muriel Gray; while national poet Jackie Kay and writers AL Kennedy, Denise Mina and Louise Welch have all contributed work to an anniversary fundraising book. But the success of the library is as much to do with the endurance of grassroots activism and the work of two visionary women – Adele Patrick and Sue John – who recognised the power of heritage before it was sexy.

The power of heritage … Adele Patrick and Sue John at the Glasgow Women’s Library. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

It was a time of powerful global backlash against feminism – documented in Susan Faludi’s book, Backlash – but in Scotland, Patrick recalls, there was a “perverse flowering”, with Edinburgh’s ground-breaking Zero Tolerance anti-violence campaign, Glasgow’s library and Scotland’s first feminist magazine Harpies and Quines. The library proper began a year later as a small volunteer-run effort in a shopfront in Garnethill, later squatting with the Lesbian Archive and Information Centre on Trongate, before being offered temporary accommodation in Glasgow’s venerable Mitchell Library, only to discover its collection had grown too big. Funding, or the lack of it, has been a constant struggle over the decades.

Today, with more than 20,000 books and 300,000 archival items, all donated, the GWL has expanded to take on 22 paid staff alongside about 100 volunteers, with guaranteed funding from Creative Scotland for the next two years. A combination of Scottish government grants and public donations of more than £1m paid for the revamp of the Grade B-listed library building in Bridgeton, which is now its first permanent home. “We are in a golden period now,” says John, “when we are talking to national galleries and national libraries as equals. It’s an unrecognisable landscape since the early 90s, and very different from the parlous state that other libraries find themselves in.”

“There’s no other library in Europe like it,” adds Patrick. “It’s not purely academic, not hand in glove with government; some of it just feels like a crazy accident.”

Over the past month, the library has welcomed visitors from Kuwait, the US, Canada, England, Wales and, most crucially, their immediate neighbours in the East End. “We brought the community with us,” explains Patrick. “People have impressions of this area, whether that’s sectarianism or poverty, or that it is very white, but we work with a lot of BME women.”

The team immediately hired an audience worker who drew a one-mile line around the new building and set out to meet everyone within it.

It was also about bringing west to east, says Patrick, referring to the city’s geographical division between the well-heeled West End and the impoverished east. “People who are most marginalised don’t think they have a place in galleries or archives.”

Dress patterns at the Glasgow Women’s Library. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Meanwhile, as researchers continue to sift through this remarkable domestic treasure trove, hidden gems continue to reveal themselves. Recently, one of the many knitting patterns was found to have been devised by a woman who was a Polish spy in the second world war – she had written it in code.

For John, the library’s flourishing marks an acceptance of a truth that she and Patrick have always embraced. “There has been a shift in understanding now, and an acceptance of the idea that women can preserve their own heritage – and about the power of that heritage.”

Other women’s archives in the UK

The Women’s Library

Established in 1926, as the Library of the London Society for Women’s Service, it includes the personal archives of the Guardian’s Mary Stott and Jill Craigie. Its primary objective today is to document women’s lives in Britain. It is now housed at the London School of Economics.

Nottingham Women’s Centre

The only library of its kind in the East Midlands, it has managed to retain most of its original, and often rare books and magazines

The Feminist Archive South

Based at Bristol University, and, north, at the University of Leeds, this collection includes personal and organisational archives, conference papers, dissertations and books, as well as complete print runs of journals like Spare Rib, Shrew, and Scarlet Woman.

The Women’s Liberation Music Archive

This collection pays tribute to the 1970s and 80s feminist musicians who incorporated political and social messages into their music. Its collection is housed at the University of Bristol Special Collections.